Fallout 4 has gone gold - sound the air raid sirens and prepare the bottlecaps

It's so close now. I know some think people who write about videogames shouldn't get excited about upcoming releases, but I will fire a Fat Man mini nuke right at their stupid faces. I've been waiting for this for so long.

I feel the same about this as I have the entire time. I'm trying not to let my hope get out of hand that they'll take some risks with the world building and potentially annoy the 'wah, it has to be exactly THIS way to be Fallout.' You're not going to be able to make those buggers happy no matter what you do, anyway.

I want them to do something clever with the world and its narrative. I want to feel impressed that they went somewhere. As it is, I often feel more impressed with the subtlety, cleverness, and riskiness of '90s and early '00s cartoons than I do with video games. An episode of the Justice League usually has more of that in it in one episode than the post 360 history of video games.

And that saddens me.

Yes, you'll get it in indie games, but that goes without saying. These cartoons were on mainstream networks and they did so much with what they had. It just shows that the video games industry has so much growing up to do.

I don't mean turning things on their head for cheap spectacle and shock value, either. That can be badly written, too. The new Wally West (Kid Flash) in DC comics, for example. Yes, a new ethnicity could have been clever, but envisioning the character as the most ridiculous black stereotype I've seen in years ... isn't. I mean, yes, a hood hoodlum of 12 years old who idolises his criminal father and needs the aid of a white man to stop being so misguided is so incredibly empowering for black people.

But that's the mainstream, now.

And I hate it?? I can't not. I try not to. I just want them to be more clever. There are so many ways Fallout can be clever. I've spoken before about how the most interesting thing you can do with that Universe is make it a post post post apocalypse. The beginnings of civilisation exist and the rebuilding began a while ago. Now you're just trying to keep all the varied factions and races on the straight and narrow, combatting everything from racial prejudices to conspiracies.

And because I miss Goris you could have a deathclaw buddy as your partner. A partner you start out with from the beginning of the game and have a complex friendship with, rather than 'oh, I met a stranger and now I want to romance them in a shallow way and lay them many times?' I don't see the appeal.

I want to be excited for video games. I see so much potential in a setting like Fallout. Each new Fallout drives me crazy, there's always this glimmer of hope that someone will exploit all the brilliance to be had from such a setting and put together something breathtakingly, amazingly, brilliantly clever.

I want that. I want that from video games.

So you can be excited for Fallout 4, Kirk. I am too but it's barely a faint echo by comparison. And maybe I wish I wasn't. Or maybe I wish I could be as excited as you are and see what you and others do in video games today.

I want to be excited, too.

If anything, it inspires me in a way. It inspires me to want to make my own post apocalyptic paradise -- one that's every bit as clever as I know it could be. I've not the means to ever see such a thing to fruition, though. After all, I'm just a guy with ideas, and that's not exactly worth a lot in today's world where people seem to be ideaphobic.